October 15, 2013

Nine Inch Nails ignite the ACC in Toronto

I had never seen Nine Inch Nails live before their October 4th show at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto for their Tension 2013 tour in support of the Hesitation Marks album.

Overall: really good show. Certainly not great, not amazing, but good. Maybe it's my fault for not being as into Trent's more recent albums, but I found the show a little too "mid-tempo". Lots of slower songs and not as much of the manic anger I expected from a Nine Inch Nails show. At one point during the main set, I thought to myself, "...And Trent Reznor slips quietly into middle age..." Couldn't quite wrap my head around the back-up singers thing either.

The highlights of the setlist for me were "March of the Pigs" which appeared early in the set, "Wish", "Only", "The Hand That Feeds" and "Head Like A Hole" from the end of the main set. I also enjoyed "Survivalism", "Came Back Haunted" from Hesitation Marks, "Somewhat Damaged", and the last song of the encore, "Hurt". Overall, too much mellow stuff (never thought I'd say that about a NIN show), too much from Hesitation Marks and a way-too mellow encore. I wish I had as much fun as the guys standing behind me, singing out every word to every song.

The sound was amazing and Trent's vocals were great throughout. He put together a really good band for this tour and they played impecably. The light show was pretty cool too, with pods of lights over each band member for the first few tunes. Then a wall of mesh/lights descended between the audience and the band, displaying cool lighting effects including a nice 3D cubes effect. Top notch show from a light and sound perspective.

All in all, glad I saw them live, but I won't rush out to see them again.

And of course, now for some tunes:

Pictures in this post are mine. Happy for a big damn zoom to reach in from the nosebleeds!